Yet Another Intrusion on Teaching in Florida

The State University System of Florida’s recent decision to require campuses to identify all courses that might have “antisemitic material and/or anti-Israel bias” is the latest step in the state’s ongoing attack on academic and intellectual freedom and the autonomy of higher education. This decree from Ray Rodrigues, chancellor of the system, follows upon the state’s efforts to restrict what may be taught on “divisive concepts,” to intrude upon the practices of academic evaluation, and to reduce teaching and curriculum to “government speech.” As the AAUP Special Committee on Political Interference and Academic Freedom in Florida’s Public Higher Education System demonstrated, “academic freedom, tenure, and shared governance in Florida’s public colleges and universities currently face a politically and ideologically driven assault unparalleled in US history.”

This latest intrusion into the classroom should concern all who care about higher education. As the AAUP’s 2007 statement Freedom in the Classroom explained, it is the faculty’s responsibility to teach in accordance with the state of their disciplinary knowledge, not in accordance with the whims of the state, boards of trustees, or powerful outside forces. That may, in accordance with the judgment of the instructor, include discussion of controversial materials. And it will inevitably include both topics and materials relevant to the course subject. To insist that courses and materials that touch on certain subjects must be subject to extra scrutiny because of their controversial nature is to impose a political litmus test on what should be professional judgment.

In this sense, the latest foray into thought policing builds upon and deepens Florida’s increasingly authoritarian approach to higher education. Before, it concerned concepts developed to understand the histories of race, gender, and sexuality in the United States. Now the university administration seeks to monitor even the existence of materials on Jewish history or on the history of Israel and Palestine. For, let there be no mistake, in order to identify the materials covered by Chancellor Rodrigues’ decree, all materials that touch on either Jewish history or the history of the Middle East will have to be reviewed by some ill-defined process.  The potential chilling effect on the free discussion of these important subjects should be clear.

That Florida is undertaking these steps purportedly to spare students, especially Jewish students, from possible discomfort is, like the state’s previous efforts to spare students from alleged guilt over divisive concepts, not only an insult to students but a violation of the very spirit of higher education. That the definition of what counts as antisemitic or anti-Israeli in Florida is circumscribed by the already politicized IHRA is yet another sign that this action is less about achieving education and more about achieving the politicization of the university system in Florida.

We have expressed our great concern about the political interference in the Florida higher education system on several occasions. We reiterate that concern now and urge Chancellor Rodrigues to retract his decree and remember that a university can only be a university when faculty have the freedom to teach their disciplines without administrative or political intrusion.